Cognitive Development Flashcards
Jean Piaget
- Started in biology & later shifted into psychology
- noticed that children’s responses varied by age
- wanted to know how children develop their understanding of the world
Jean Piaget & his research
- Revised his theories throughout his life based on new observations
- Revised theories through semi-structured interviews & observations
- Cognitive development is a MATURATION process that happens in specific stages
- Environment influences are limited
Jean Piaget & his theory
- Continual organization of knowledge
- Adolescent thinking qualitatively different from other ages
- Cognitive development is a maturation process that occurs in stages
Biologically based functions
- Organize
* Adapt – fit w/ environment to promote survival
What are the Processes of development?
- Schemas
- Constructivism
- Disequilibrium
- Equilibrium
- Assimilation
- Accommodation
What is a schema?
- Processes of development
* outline/model
What is Constructivism?
- Process of development
* Actively receive knowledge
What is Disequilibrium?
- Process of development
* State of confusion where schemas do not fit into experience
What is Equilibrium?
- Process of development
* Attempt to resolve cognitive uncertainty
What is Assimilation?
- Process of development
* Making a new experience fit into an existing schema
What is accommodation?
- Process of development
* Changing existing schemas, to they fit new experiences
What are the Piagets 4 stages of development?
- Sensorimotor stage (Birth-2 yrs old)
- Pre-operational stage (2-7 yrs old)
- Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 yrs old)
- Formal Operations (12+ yrs old)
What happens in the sensorimotor stage? (Birth - 2 years old)
- Learn about the environment through the senses
- Simple reflexes
- Developing Schemas (primary circular - repetition)
- Discover Procedures (secondary circular - consequences of outside world)
- Intentional behavior – Goal oriented
- Novelty & exploration – Trial & error
- Mental representation – pretending, imitation, thought
What happens in the pre-operational stage? (2-7 years old)?
- Transductive reasoning – creating connections that do not exist based on observations
- Mental representation
- Magical reasons
- Centration – can only focus on 1 aspect of object
- Animism – Human attributes to inanimate objects
- Artificialism – belief that natural objects were created by humans, for a human purpose
- Lack of conservation – concentrate on length & height, cannot consider volume
What happens in the concrete operational stage (7-12 years old)?
- Logical thought
- Reversibility (manipulation of info)
- Classification
- Transitivity – ability to recognize relationships among various things in a serial order
- decrease egocentrism
What happens in the formal operations stage? (12 yrs. +)
- Abstract thought – inventing & formulating ideas about things they have not been exposed to
- Hypothetical deductive reasoning – forming hypotheses about how the world works & logically think about it
- Inductive reasoning – how to figure out problems, individual examples to genera concepts
- Internal Reflection (metacognition)
- Adolescent egocentricity
What were some critiques about piaget theory or model?
- ages are inaccurate
- stages do not differ
- do the ideas stand up across different cultures?
Attention in infancy
- Novelty preference
- Infantile amnesia
- magic shrinking machine
Attention in childhood
- direct & sustain attention
- individual differences
- Processing efficacy
Automaticity
When you become very good at doing a skill that you begin to do them implicitly
Memory in childhood
- scripts
- repetition
- organization
- elaboration
- Knowledge base – know more info, easier to remember related information
- False memories – suggestibility
Executive functioning
- Coordinated attention & memory
- controls behavioral responses
- Inhibition – focus on 1 task
- Cognitive flexibility – to switch attention
Metacognition
thinking about thinking
Metamemory
understanding how memory works & how to use it effectively
